ARMM embarks on rehab intervention for former Abu Sayyaf bandits

BASILAN --- Agencies will experiment on an intervention package for Abu Sayyaf gunmen who surrendered Thursday to determine solutions to Islamic militancy that are far from being bloody and destructive.
The 21 hardcore bandits, who confessed to having participated in deadly harassments of non-military targets and roadside bombings in years past, yielded through the joint intercession of the Army’s 64th Infantry Battalion and Mayor Gulam Hataman of Sumisip town in Basilan.Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao told reporters Friday the ARMM’s Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team will immediately extend to them spiritual and livelihood interventions to hasten their return to the fold of law.He said ARMM’s health, social welfare, education and agriculture departments will help rehabilitate the 21 former Abu Sayyaf members for them to become productive while undergoing gradual assimilation into the mainstream.Hataman said the provincial government of Basilan and the local council of Islamic leaders will provide spiritual re-orientation lessons for them to re-embrace a moderate” kind of Islam. The true and correct Islam is one which espouses religious tolerance, teaches inter-faith fraternalism and rejects use of violence to achieve any political and religious objective,” Hataman said.He said radical preachers, just to advance their vested interests, are circumventing Islamic teachings on jihad, supposedly only implying rejection of sinful acts to achieve spiritual perfection and peace with people everywhere, regardless of religions and races. We have proven time and again that use of force alone cannot address the nagging rebellion problem in the Moro homeland. Even this religious extremism now plaguing some areas in Mindanao cannot be solved by use of force alone,” Hataman said.The 21 bandits swore together to reform for good, respect the Philippine flag and help protect their villages from attacks by the Abu Sayyaf before Army Col. Thomas Cirilo Donato of the Basilan-based 104th Brigade and local officials in Sumisip town.The surrender rite was held at the municipal government center in Barangay Buli-Buli northwest of Sumisip, hometown of the ARMM governor.ARMM’s vice governor, Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman, and the region’s health secretary, physician Kadil Sinolinding, Jr., separately announced on Friday that social welfare and health personnel of the regional government will immediately carry out Hataman’s intervention program for the 21 former Abu Sayyaf gunmen.Lucman, who is managing ARMM’s social welfare secretary on concurrent capacity, said it is important to re-educate them on Islamic teachings against kidnappings, extortion, and disrespect for non-Muslims. Nowhere in the Holy Qur’an can one find a single verse urging Muslims to behead people, to kidnap people as source of income,” Lucman said.The Abu Sayyaf is feared for its practice of mulcting money from Muslim and Christian folks to sustain its food and mobility needs, for beheading captives if ransom demands are not met, and for venting its ire on hapless non-combatants to avenge losses in encounter with state security forces.Lucman said he favors the plan of Hataman to let ARMM’s cooperatives development office to organize the 21 former Abu Sayyaf members into a communal peasant group for them to become productive too.